One Accountant. One Blog.

Travelogue: My Midwest Adventure – Day 1

As I sit here crammed into a fine Southwest airplane en route to Chicago and then Detroit I can’t help but wonder whether or not the person next to me has showered any time in the past 36 years. I also can’t help but wonder how much of Detroit I will be able to buy with the change in my pocket. I bet a lot.

This being the first day in my midwest adventure I’m excited to visit places that I have never been to before. I’ve, of course, heard a lot about Detroit (it used to be a city in the USA before being traded to Canada for a hockey player and the expression, “ay?”) and am looking forward to leaving the city on Friday as I venture off to Moline (roughly translated as: a place in Illinois or Iowa) and then to Chicago (land of a football team that hates its fans).

At any rate, this is how it all started…

I woke up at around 5:30 feeling a great weight upon my chest. At first I thought it might be a heart attack or at least a sadness of leaving my family for a few days but I soon discovered that it was just my youngest sleeping on top of my chest. He’s like a cat – he even landed on his feet when I threw him off of me in a fit of terror.

Pretty impressive.

After apologizing profusely to my son for throwing him (his reply to my apology was, oddly enough, a hiss), I said goodbye to my wife and kids (developing a case of watery eyes – due to allergies, I’m sure) and departed for the airport.

Not including the lingering allergy symptoms, the trip to the airport was uneventful and, having arrived way too early for my flight, I had no choice but to get lunch at Rogue Brewing Company’s airport pub. A real bummer.

As I whiled away the time eating a Kobe beef cheeseburger and sampling a couple of beers (for quality control purposes only) I made my way to the first leg of my flight and promptly regretted not having more beers to do a quality control test on.

In route to Chicago I learned that my connecting flight to Detroit was delayed by two hours causing me to wonder if Canada had annexed the great city back to the US. As I wondered around Chicago Midway airport I learned a lot about the city. Here is a summary:

1. The bars in the airport sell beer to go.

I love Chicago.

Since I will not be able to explore much of Detroit tonight unless I decide that I’d rather not leave the city alive, I am going to have to cut this post short. Before I do, however, I’ll leave you with another tidbit about Chicago: